Colorado Looks to be More Disciplined in Game 5

The Colorado Avalanche pushed back after falling behind early but ultimately lost 5-4 to the Dallas Stars in Game 4 of its second-round matchup on Sunday.
The Avs gave the Stars two power-play opportunities in the first period, and Dallas found the back of the net on both before it tallied for a third time with the man advantage in the third frame. With Colorado's loss, Dallas now has a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
"I think Dallas came out engaged physically right away and skating and then the penalties gave them life. If you study the game and look at the scoring chances for and against 5-on-5, I think we are doing a real good job. It's the penalties that we are taking, and their power play is feeding their offense and their energy right now," said Avs head coach Jared Bednar. "We take a couple penalties early, and they capitalize on them. Then we kind of get back to even strength and start doing some good things late in the first, but still you are talking about a whole period… I give our team credit for battling back and scratching and clawing through the second period.

"But you know I say it all the time, catch-up hockey is losing hockey and we got to have a better start than that, and the penalties again. Game 2 it came back to haunt us and Game 3 we survived the penalties and tonight again, they are too dangerous, they are too dangerous. We got to stay out of the box."

Colorado was shorthanded six times in the contest, the most the team has had to go on the penalty kill since the postseason began. Although the Avs have had some success at limiting their opposition while down a skater this postseason, Bednar says the team needs to be more restrained in its next matchup.
"We definitely did some good things today, but we didn't get the job done, it wasn't for a full 60 minutes. I will go back to it, Game 2 discipline, Game 3 discipline, penalties tonight, some of them undisciplined. They hurt us," Bednar said. "So, penalty kill has got to find a way to be better, goaltending's going to have to improve a little bit. Our discipline has got to improve, we all got to dig in a little bit more on the defensive side of things. I think we are creating enough chances to win the hockey game… We have to continue to build on the positives that we have, and we got to learn quickly from some of our mistakes."
The Avs controlled the game for much of the middle frame and made the score 3-2 game at the second intermission. After the Stars had a 10-5 advantage in shots on goal in the opening period, Colorado had a 17-8 edge in the second and got goals from Valeri Nichushkin and Cale Makar.
"I think it was just a matter of them coming out hard. They came out hard and earned their bounces, and all of a sudden, we were down 3-0. You get into the penalty box and put these guys on the power play, all of a sudden we were down," said Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog. "We started playing and obviously we got better I felt as the game wore on, and especially in the second period we were looking real good there at times and we had a push early in the third to tie it up, but obviously getting down in a hole early didn't help us."
Dallas scored twice in the third as Colorado tried to stage another comeback, although the team was not able to find the equalizer. The Avalanche again had a 15-11 control in shots on goal in the period, but the Stars had the edge in the category that matters most when the final buzzer sounded.
"We got to shake it off. I thought we played good enough to win," said Avs forward Nathan MacKinnon. "We outshot them every game but one this series, we've had lots of leads, we've scored plenty of goals. It just feels like they score in bunches right now. They are very opportunistic, obviously some of that is on us, but when they get one, they get two or three right now, and we got to limit that obviously. The series isn't over. We are going to be ready for Game 5."

LOOKING TO GAME 5

Trailing the best-of-seven set 3-1, the Avs are confident that they can clean up their game and add more contests to the series.
"I think we have been doing a lot of good things, like we've been saying, we've been scoring every game, and I think we just got to defend a little better and keep pucks out of the net," said Andre Burakovsky. "I believe in this team, and we just got to come out better in the next one. It's all in, I mean that's kind of what we play for, they're fun games that really matter. We are going to come out strong and play a really good game."
The team has learned from each of the first four contests of the Round 2 matchup and will use that knowledge combined with its will to win in order to be better going into the do-or-die outing.
"It's simply this, and it doesn't guarantee you the victory, but you got to really want it. You got to really want it. You got to remember all the hard work you put in for, it's over a year now--offseason training to this season to the pause training, back in it again," Bednar said. "Your guys have been invested for over a year to try to get after that Cup. You got to really want it, you got to be mentally tough and you got to believe. If you do that, and then you got to go out and still play a real good hockey game to win. We know Dallas is a really good team, but if you have those things you are going to go out, you're going to compete to try and win the game and you give yourself a chance.
"I like to think we have that I've been given the indication many, many times that we do. We have to be better than we were tonight… We got to bounce back after tonight's game and go get one win. Obviously, its cliché but you got to get one win and take it from there. Every win you get in this series changes it a little bit."

POSTGAME NOTES

The Avalanche played the first game of its second back-to-back set of the 2020 postseason, the first time since the club moved to Denver that the Avs are playing multiple back-to-backs in a playoff year. Colorado split the first back-to-back set, winning Game 2 (3-2) and losing Game 3 (4-2) of its first-round series against the Arizona Coyotes.
Nathan MacKinnon extended his point streak to 12 games, the longest playoff point streak in franchise history and the longest of any player since 2010 when Chicago's Jonathan Toews had a 13-game streak and Detroit's Johan Franzen had a 12-game run.
MacKinnon is one of six players in NHL history to begin a postseason with a point streak of 12 or more games, joining Bryan Trottier (18 games in 1981), Mark Messier (14 games in 1988 and 13 games in 1994), Bobby Orr (14 games in 1970 and 13 games in 1972), Johan Franzen (12 games in 2010) and Denis Potvin (12 games in 1976).
MacKinnon has a league-high 21 points (seven goals, 14 assists) this postseason and 50 career playoff points (18 goals, 32 assists), tied for 11th in Avalanche/Nordiques franchise history (Chris Drury, Alex Tanguay).

Cale Makar finished with two points (one goal, one assist) for his second straight multi-point outing. He has six points (one goal, five assists) over a three-game point streak and his 13 points in the playoffs rank second among all defensemen and eighth among all skaters.
Makar is now tied for fifth in points by an Avalanche/Nordiques defenseman in a single playoff year.

Valeri Nichushkin registered two goals, his first markers of the postseason and his first playoff tally since April 21, 2014 as a member of the Dallas Stars.
Michael Hutchinson made his Stanley Cup Playoff debut, finishing with three saves in 9:21 in a relief effort.